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Netblocks is not a reliable source: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netblocks-internet-shutdowns https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netblocks-internet-shutdowns

Netblocks is not a reliable source: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netblocks-internet-shutdowns https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netblocks-internet-shutdowns The Wired did extensive reporting on them and their unethical practices and is worth a read. Please be extremely careful with their reporting. They don't publish their data and it's a mystery on how they get access to it.

1cvmask 5y ago
The website on internet censorship/outage went after researcher Colin Anderson and censored him by taking over his domain netblocks.fyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBlocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBlocks
diggan 5y ago
What? Netblocks is a relatively transparent organization and it's absolutely clear how data is collected: Volunteers runs their clients and reports the data back to them. Check out their GitHub organization: https://github.com/ntblk https://github.com/ntblk Also, many people use https://api.webprobe.org/ https://api.webprobe.org/ which reports data too
- middleclick 5y ago
  Please read the article I linked. The GitHub repository doesn't have any of the code that is relevant. For example, the code on api.webprobe is obfuscated and is not open source. For a long time as the article notes, there was no warning before the tests ran and even now, the list of website the web probe scans is not shared anywhere, not even after you run the tests. Again, please read the article as it covers all this and much more and why Netblocks is a problematic organization in this space. It's a detailed article.
blendergeek 5y ago
> Netblocks is not a reliable source The Wired article definitely makes the case that Netblocks is shady and seems to suggest all sorts of malfeseance. But nowhere in there does the article allege that the graphs published by Netblocks are wrong.
- tg180 5y ago
  The report contains practically no technical data. "Network data show connectivity flatlining at 24%".. 24% of what? Reachable IPv4 addresses? Traffic volume? Client side HTTP/TLS requests? DNS queries? Do they take whatever data they get, aggregate everything into one giant field called "connectivity", and evaluate the stability of a connection based on that success rate? We don't know.
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1cvmask 5y ago

The website on internet censorship/outage went after researcher Colin Anderson and censored him by taking over his domain netblocks.fyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBlocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBlocks

diggan 5y ago

What? Netblocks is a relatively transparent organization and it's absolutely clear how data is collected: Volunteers runs their clients and reports the data back to them. Check out their GitHub organization: https://github.com/ntblk https://github.com/ntblk Also, many people use https://api.webprobe.org/ https://api.webprobe.org/ which reports data too

middleclick 5y ago
Please read the article I linked. The GitHub repository doesn't have any of the code that is relevant. For example, the code on api.webprobe is obfuscated and is not open source. For a long time as the article notes, there was no warning before the tests ran and even now, the list of website the web probe scans is not shared anywhere, not even after you run the tests. Again, please read the article as it covers all this and much more and why Netblocks is a problematic organization in this space. It's a detailed article.

blendergeek 5y ago

> Netblocks is not a reliable source The Wired article definitely makes the case that Netblocks is shady and seems to suggest all sorts of malfeseance. But nowhere in there does the article allege that the graphs published by Netblocks are wrong.

tg180 5y ago
The report contains practically no technical data. "Network data show connectivity flatlining at 24%".. 24% of what? Reachable IPv4 addresses? Traffic volume? Client side HTTP/TLS requests? DNS queries? Do they take whatever data they get, aggregate everything into one giant field called "connectivity", and evaluate the stability of a connection based on that success rate? We don't know.
- deleted 5y ago
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